Take These Broken Wings And Learn To Fly

Chapter Four

Losing my wings hurt, but losing you would be unbearable.

Crowley lies in bed, staring at the ceiling for hours, with those words circling in his head.

Aziraphale is lying next to him. They aren't touching, and Crowley can't get himself to look, but he can hear the angel's deep breathing as Aziraphale sleeps, feels the mattress dip whenever he shifts ever so slightly.

He's been spending more nights here since that first time Aziraphale asked him to.

He doesn't know how to feel about it, doesn't like the uncontrollable way he craves the angel's closeness, longs to hold him and card his fingers through his soft white-blond hair. It's not new, of course, everything about this longing is long-known and familiar to Crowley. He just thinks it should probably be different, can't help but think himself weak realising how it feels exactly the same as it did before.

Before.

Before Supreme Archangels and foolish kisses and hurtful words.

Before coffees and elevator rides and lonely months filled with empty bottles.

Before the nightingales stopped singing.

Losing my wings hurt, but losing you would be unbearable.

Crowley can't wrap his head around it.

It hurts. It hurts in the best way, and in the worst way too.

Because it's proof of what he already knew. Aziraphale cares, he always cared. It's probably Aziraphale's greatest fault and his greatest strength that he cares, cares too much, about too many things.

He cares about Crowley too.

Crowley knows. He knows.

And yet.

It's my worst nightmare, Aziraphale has said a few days prior. The thought of living out eternity in a world where you're gone.

Aziraphale doesn't say things like this.

Not even Crowley says things like this. Sure, he hints and he suggests and he implies.

I'll give you a lift. Anywhere you wanna go. (I'll stay with you, wherever you are, I wanna be too.)

We can go off together. Alpha Centauri. (I won't ever leave you, if you just let me stay.)

We're on our side. (You're everything I need, everything I want, the only thing that matters.)

We're a team. A group of the two of us. (Let me love you, please, just let me love you.)

But this is something else.

Something more.

Something dangerous.

It's something they don't do.

And least of all Aziraphale.

And yet he said it. Keeps looking at Crowley like there's an ache inside him that runs much deeper than the pain his back wounds inflict. Perhaps the same ache Crowley feels. An ache that's secretly a longing.

Crowley stares at the blank white of his bedroom ceiling, eyes unblinking.

Something inside him is churning, something that was cracked open by Aziraphale's words, something he had locked up and shoved away into a dark corner when the angel left. He isn't ready for it to open again, knows that it will spill out and sweep him away, wild and messy and too much, too fast.

Crowley knows what it is. He's scared to name it, even in the secrecy of his own mind.

He never was a fan of four-letter words, but here he is, full of them.